The question of the expedition of the Emperor Muh to the West in the year 984 B.C., or during that year and the two following, is worthy of further consideration for many reasons; and after all that has been said about the rise of the Chou dynasty, the decay of the patriarchal system, the emulous ambitions of the vassals, the destruction of the feudal Empire, and the substitution of a centralized administration under a new dynasty of numbered August Emperors, it will now be comparatively easier to understand.
We have seen that, if any local annals besides those of Lu have been in part preserved, those of Ts'in at least were deliberately intended by the First August Emperor to be wholly preserved, and must therefore hold first rank among all the restored vassal annals published by Sz-ma Ts'ien in or about 90 B.C.; and it must be remembered that the original Lu annals have perished equally with those of Ts'i, Sung, and other important states; it is only Confucius' "Springs and Autumns,"—evidently composed from the Lu archives,—that have survived. Well, the Ts'in Annals, as given by Sz-ma Ts'ien, record that one of the early Ts'in ancestors "was in favour with the Emperor Muh on account of his admirable skill in manipulating horses" [names of four particularly fine horses given]. The Emperor "went west to examine his fiefs"; he was so "charmed with his experiences that he forgot the administrative duties which should have called him back." Meanwhile, a revolt broke out in East (uncivilized) China, and the manipulator of horses was sent by the Emperor back to China at express speed, in order to stave off trouble till the Emperor could get back himself. It is also stated of him that, in spite of remonstrances, he made extensive war upon the Tartars, and that, in consequence, his uncivilized vassals ceased to present themselves at court. No other mention is made of this expedition by Sz-ma Ts'ien in the imperial annals, and, so (apart from the fictitious importance afterwards given to the expedition, and especially by European investigators in quite recent times), there is really no reason to attach any more political weight to it than to the other innumerable exploring expeditions of emperors into the almost unknown regions surrounding the nucleus of orthodox China so often defined in these chapters. We have already (page 184) cited the case in which the father and predecessor of King Muh had ventured on a tour of inspection as far as modern Hankow on the Yang-tsz River, or, as some say, as far as some place on the River Han, where he was murdered; in 656 the First Protector raked up this affair against Ts'u, whose capital was very near King-thou Fu, above Hankow. Finally, scant though Sz-ma Ts'ien's two references to this affair may be, they at least agree with each other, i.e. the Emperor did actually go to Tartar regions, and a revolt of non-Chinese tribes did actually break out in the immediate sequel.
But in A.D. 281 a certain tomb at a place once belonging to Wei, but later attached to the kingdom of Ngwei formerly part of Tsin, was desecrated by thieves, and, amongst other books written in ancient characters found therein (unfortunately all more or less injured by the rummaging thieves), were two of paramount interest. One was an account of, and was entirely devoted to, the Emperor Muh's voyage to the West; the other was the Annals of Ngwei (i.e. of that third part of old Tsin which in 403 B.C. was formally recognized by the Emperor as the separate state of Ngwei), including those of old Tsin, and also what may be termed the general history of China, narrated incidentally. These Annals of Tsin or Ngwei are usually styled the Bamboo Books, because they were written in ink on bamboo tablets strung together at one end like a fan or a narrow Venetian blind. They also speak shortly of the Emperor Muh's expedition, and thus they also are useful for comparing hiatuses, names, faults, and dates; both in general history, and in the account of King Muh's expedition. Since the discovery of these old documents (which had been buried for well- nigh 600 years, and of which no other record whatever had been preserved either in writing or by tradition), Chinese literary wonder-mongers have exercised their wits upon the task of identifying the unheard-of places mentioned; the more so in that one place, and one king bearing the same foreign name as the place—Siwangmu—was so written phonetically that it might mean "Western-King-Mother." They endeavoured to show how this and other placesmighthave lain in relation to the genuine places discovered by Chinese generals after these ancient documents were buried, seven centuries after the events recorded therein. Then came the foreigner with his Jewish Creation, Confusion of Tongues, Accadian and Babylonian origin of all science, etc., etc. Of course Marco Polo's adventures at once suggested to the European, thus biased, that 3000 years ago the Emperor Muhmighthave found his way to Persia, andmighthave been this or that Babylonian, Egyptian, or Persian hero; in fact, Professor Forke of Berlin even takes his Chinese majesty as far as Africa, and introduces him to the Queen of Sheba (= Western-King-Mother).
The distinguished Professor Edouard Chavannes of Paris has recently attempted to show, not only that the Emperor Muh never got beyond the Tarim (which, indeed, is absolutely certain from the text itself), but that it was not the Emperor Muh at all who went, but the semi-Turkish Duke Muh of Ts'in, in the seventh century B.C., who made the expedition.
To begin with, let us see what the expedition purports to be. In the first place, the thieves used as torches, or otherwise destroyed, the first few pages of the bamboo sheaf book, and we do not know, consequently, whence the Emperor started: there is much indirect evidence, however, to show that he started from some place on the headwaters of the Han River, in what must then have been his own territory (South Shen Si); especially as his three expeditions all ended there. It is certain, however, that he had not travelled many days on his first journey before he reached a tribe of Tartars very frequently mentioned in all histories, and bearing the same name as the Tartars whom Sz-ma Ts'ien says the Emperor Muhdidconquer. He crossed the Yellow River on the 169th day, came to two rivers, the Redwater (222nd day), and the Blackwater (248th day), which rivers in after ages have been frequently mentioned in connection with Tibetan, Turkish, and Ouigour wars, and are apparently in the Si-ning and Kan-chou Fu, or possibly Kwa Chou regions (cf. p. 68); but first he passed, after the 170th day, a place called "Piled Stones," a name which has never been lost to history, and which corresponds to Nien-po, between Lan-thou Fu and Si-ning, as marked on modern maps. In other words, he went by the only high-road there was in existence, and ever since then has continued in existence (just traversed by Bruce), leading to the Lob Nor region; whence again he branched off, presumably to Turfan, or to Harashar; thence to Urumtsi, and possibly Kuché, as they are respectively now called; but on the whole it is not likely that he got beyond Harashar and Urumtsi. Even 800 years later, when the Chinese had thoroughly explored all the west up to the Hindu Kush, their expeditions had all to proceed from Lob Nor to Khoten, or from Lob Nor (or near it)viâHarashar and Kuché along the Tarim Valley: it was not for long after the discovery of these routes that the later Chinese discovered the northerly Hami route, and the possibility of avoiding Lob Nor altogether. His charioteer is said in this account to have been a man (named) whose name is exactly the name, written in exactly the same way, as the name of the ancestor of Ts'in, who, Sz-ma Ts'ien tells us, actually was the charioteer of the Emperor when he marched forth against the Tartars, and who hurried back to China when the revolts broke out owing to the Emperor's absence. As the Emperor received, from various princes, presents of wine, silk, and rice, it is almost certain that he must have avoided bleak, out-of-the-way places, and have made for the productive regions of Harashar, Turfan, and possibly Kuché, any or all three of these. With a little more care and patience we may yet succeed in identifying, and by the same names, several more of the places mentioned by the old chronicler. In about ten months (286 days from the first day already mentioned, and 17 days out from "Piled Stones") he reachedSiwangmu. This is not at all unlikely to be Urumtsi, or a place near it, possibly Ku- CH'ÊNg or Gutchen, becauseSiwangmu(also the name of the king of that place), gave him a feast on a certain lake, which lake, written in exactly the same way, became the name of a quite new district in 653 A.D., when it was abolished; and that district was at or near Urumtsi; the presumption being that, in the seventh century A.D., it was so named on account of old traditions, then well known. Roughly speaking, it took the Emperor 300 days to go, and a second 300 to get back; stoppages, feasts, functions, all included. The total distance travelled, as specified from chief station to chief station, is 13,300li(say 4000 miles) toSiwangmuand to the hunting grounds near but beyond it. When 200 days out he came to the place where his feet were washed with kumiss; this place is frequently mentioned in history; even Confucius names it, as one of the northernmost conquests of the Chou dynasty. The only doubt is whether it is near Lan-thou Fu in Kan Suh province, or near the northern bend of the Yellow River. The journey back was hurried and shorter (as we might well suppose from Sz-ma Ts'ien's accounts above given), that is to say, only 10,000li. But the total for the whole double journey of 660 days in all, including all by-trips, excursions, and hunts, was 38,000li, or about 12,000 miles—say 20 miles a day. I have myself travelled several thousand miles in China and Tartary, always at the maximum rate of 30 miles a day; more usually 20, allowing for delays, bad roads, and accidents. In Dr. Legge's translation of the "Book of Odes," p. 281, there is a song about a great expedition against the Tartars in 827 B.C., one line of which is precisely, as translated by Dr. Legge: "and we marched thirtylievery day,"-which means only ten miles.
This is the chief journey; and whether the Chou Emperor in 984 B.C., or the Ts'in Duke in 650 B.C., made it, there are really no difficulties, no contradictions. Four important places at least are named which are known by exactly the same names, and are frequently mentioned, in very much later history. The Emperor had hundreds of carts or chariots with him, and we have seen that these were a special feature of orthodox China. He came across a huge moulting-ground of birds in the desert regions, and the later Chinese very frequently speak of it in Tartar-land. Being caught in the waterless desert, he had to cut the throats of some of his best horses and drink their warm blood: two friends of my own, travelling through Siberia and Mongolia, were only too glad, when nearly starving from cold, to cut a sheep's throat and drink its warm blood from the newly-gashed throat itself. Fattening up horses for food is mentioned, and washing the feet with kumiss— both incidents purely Tartar. "Cattle," distinct from horses and oxen, are alluded to—probably camels, for which no Chinese word existed until about the time of our era.
The second and third journeys, which occupied another 600 days between them, both ended at, and therefore it is assumed began at, the same place as the first journey's terminus; that is, at a place marked on modern maps as Pao-CH'ÊNg, on the Upper Han River. In later times it belonged to the semi-Chinese kingdoms of Shuh and Ts'u in turn. One of these narratives is taken up with a description of the Emperor's infatuation for a clever wizard from a far country, and of his liaison with a girl bearing his own clan-name, who died about two months before he reached home, and was buried on the road with great pomp. These two later journeys have no geographical value at all; but as the Emperor in each case again crossed the Yellow River, it is plain that he was amusing himself somewhere along the main Tartar roads, as in the first case.
It may be added that the Taoist author Lieh-tsz, in his third chapter, repeats the story of the magician, who, he says, came from the "Extreme West Country." He also explains that it was through listening to this man's wonderful tales that the Emperor "neglected state affairs, and abandoned himself to the delights of travel,"—thus anticipating by three centuries the language of Sz- ma Ts'ien in 90 B.C. The story of the particular tribe of Tartars (named with the same sounds, but not with the same characters) who washed the Emperor's feet with kumiss is also told by Lieh-tsz. The position of the Redwater River is defined, to which textual remarks the commentators add more about the River Blackwater. Curiously enough, in himself commenting upon the Emperor Muh's conversations with the chieftain ofSiwangmu, Lieh-tsz mentions the traditional departure, west, of the philosopher Lao-tsz, his own master.
Now, although there is considerable doubt as to the authorship, date, and genuineness of Lieh-tsz's book, which at any rate was well known to Chinese bibliophiles long before our era, the fact that it mentions and repeats even part of the Emperor Muh's travels 600 years before the ancient book describing those travels was found, proves that the manipulators of the ancient book thus found did not invent the whole story after our era. It also seems to prove that in Lieh-tsz's time (i.e. immediately after Confucius) the story was already known (and probably the book of travels too), Confucius himself having mentioned one of the tribes visited by the Emperor. The Bamboo Books bring history down to 299 B.C., and were found, together with the travels of the Emperor Muh, in A.D. 281. The Bamboo Books not only support part of the story of the Emperor Muh's travels, but their accuracy in dates has been shown by Professor Chavannes to strengthen the credibility of Confucius' own history: a reference to Chapter XXXII. on the Calendar will explain what is meant by "accuracy in dates." Finally, we have Sz-ma Ts'ien's history of go B.C., citing the Chou Annals and the Ts'in Annals, or what survived of them after incessant wars between 400 and 200 B.C., and after the destruction of literature in 213 B.C.
This point settled, the next thing is to consider Professor Chavannes' reasons for supposing that Duke Muh of Ts'in (650 B.C.) and not the Emperor Muh of Chou (984 B.C.) was the real traveller:—
1. He shows that the ruling princes of Ts'in and Chao hailed from the same ancestors, were contiguous states, and, besides being largely Tartar themselves, ruled all the Tartars along the (present) Great Wall line: also that the naming of individual horses and other features of the Emperor's travels recalls features equally prominent in later Turkish history. This is all undoubtedly true: compare page 206.
2. He shows that the Duke Muh's chief claim to glory was his successes against the Tartars of the West. This is also quite certain. 3. He thinks that in 984 B.C. the literary capacity of China was not equal to the composition of such a sustained work as the Travels.
4. He also thinks that the real Chinese found in Ts'in the traditions relating to Duke Muh, and then, for the glory of China, appropriated them to the Emperor Muh, and foisted them upon orthodox history.
There is a great deal to be said for this view, which has, besides, many other minor points of detail in its favour. But it may be answered:—
1. Chou itself was in the eyes of China proper, once a "barbarian" tribe of the west, as the founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C. himself showed when he addressed his neighbours and allies, the eight other states of the west, and exhorted them, as equals, to assist him in the conquest of China. It was only in 771 B.C. that the original Chou appanage (since 1122 the western half of the imperial appanage) had been ceded to Ts'in, which in 984 was a petty state, still of the "adjunct-function" (cf.page 144) type, and not "sovereign." In 984 there was no intermediate sovereign "power" between the Emperor and the Tartars, with whom, in fact, he had been directly engaged in war independently of Ts'in. He was as much under Tartar social influences as was Ts'in: in fact, the Chou principality, under the Shang dynasty, was a sort of first edition of Ts'in principality under the Chou dynasty. Just as in 1122 B.C. Chou ousted Shang as the imperial house, so in 221 B.C. Ts'in definitely replaced Chou.
2. If Duke Muh distinguished himself by Tartar conquests, so did the Emperor Muh before him, and the authorities are all agreed on this point.
3. If in 984 B.C. the long-standing orthodox Chinese literary capacity was unequal to this effort, how is it that semi-barbarous Ts'in, the least literary of all the states (not only Chinese, but also half-Chinese), into which state records had only been introduced at all in 753 B.C., was able to compose such a book; or, if not to write the book, then to dictate so sustained and connected a story? Besides, the Emperor Muh left several inscriptions carved on stone during the progress of his travels.
4. The instances M. Chavannes cites of the tombs of Yü and Shun in South China, as being parallel instances of appropriation by orthodox Chinese of semi-Chinese traditions have already been put to quite another use above, as tending to show, on the contrary, that those two Emperors either came from the south, or had ancestral traditions in the south; (see pp. 138,191).
5. Finally, about a third of the Travels is taken up with a description of the incestuous intrigue with LadyKi, and of her sumptuous ritual funeral. Why should Duke Muh trouble himself about the rites due to members of the Ki family, to which the Emperor belonged, but he himself did not? Why should the warlike Duke Muh (who had just then been recommended by an adviser (an ex- Chinese, since become a Tartar) to adopt simple Tartar ways instead of worrying himself with the Odes and the Book "asthe Chinese did") waste his time in pomp and ritual? ( see p. 180). Again, when, as the Travels tell us, various vassal rulers from orthodox China (even so far as Shan Tung in the extreme east) arrived to pay their respects to the Emperor as their liege-lord, how is it possible to suppose that these orthodox counts and barons would come to pay court to a semi-barbarian count (for that was all he was) like Duke Muh (as he is posthumously called), one of their equals, a man who took no part in the durbar affairs, and who, on account of his human sacrifices, was not even thought fit to become an emergency Protector of China? What could the semi- Tartar ruler of Ts'in have known of all these wearisome refinements in pomp, mourning, and music? Once more, the place the Emperor started from and came back to, though part ofhisappanage in 984 B.C. and possessing an ancestral Chou temple, was not part of the Ts'in dominions in 650 B.C., and never possessed a Ts'in temple: if not independent, it was at that time a bone of contention between Ts'in and Ts'u, and by no means a safe place for equipping pleasure expeditions. Finally, if it is marvellous that the Chou Annals of Sz-ma Ts'ien do not give full details of the voyage, is it not at least equally marvellous that the Ts'in Annals should not mention it in 650 B.C., when M. Chavannes supposes it took place, whilst they do so mention it under 984 B.C., when he thinks it did not take place? All accounts agree that the ancestor of Ts'in (named) was there with the Emperor as charioteer; he was, as we have seen, equally ancestor of Chao, and the Chao Annals of Sz-ma Ts'ien say exactly what the Ts'in Annals say.
Hence we may gratefully accept Professor Chavannes' most illuminating proofs, so far as they tend to show that the Travels of the Emperor Muh are genuine history for a tour no farther than the middle Tarim Valley; but, so far as Duke Muh of Ts'in is concerned, he must be eliminated from all consideration of the matter, and we must ascribe the tour, as the Chinese do, to the Emperor Muh. Lastly, are there anyprovedinstances of such radical tamperings with history by the Chinese annalists as M. Chavannes suggests? I do not know of any; and such superficial tamperings as there are the Chinese critics always expose,coûtequecoûte, even though Confucius himself be the tamperer.
The development of China is not only elucidated by documents and events probably antecedent to the strictly historical period, such as the supposed voyage of an Emperor to the Far West, but it is also made easier to understand when we consider its possible indirect effects upon Japan. The barbarian kingdom of Wu does not really appear in Chinese history at all, even by name, until the year 585 B.C. It was found then that it had traditions of its own, and a line of kings extending back to the beginning of the Chou dynasty (1122 B.C.), and even farther beyond. In 585 B.C. the new King, Shou-mêng, hitherto an unknown and obscure vassal of Ts'u, altogether beyond the ken of orthodox China, felt quite strong enough, as we have seen in Chapter VII., to strike out an independent line of his own. It is a singular thing that, when the Japanese set about constructing a nomenclature (on Chinese posthumous lines) for their newly discovered back history in the eighth century A.D., they should have fixed upon exactly this year 585 B.C. for the death of their supposed first Mikado Jimmu (i.e.Shên-wu, the "divinely martial"). The next three Kings of Wu, all of whom, like himself, bore dissyllabic and meaningless barbarian names, were sons of Shou-mêng, and a fourth son was the cultured Ki-chah, who visited orthodox China several times, both as a spy and in order to improve himself. Then follow two sons of the last and first, respectively, of the said three brothers. The second of these royal cousins was killed in battle, and his son Fu-ch'ai vowed a terrible, vengeance against Ts'u, whose capital he subsequently took and sacked in 506 B.C. Now appears upon the scene his own vassal, Yiieh, and at first Wu gets the best of it in battle. Bloodthirsty wars follow between the two, full of picturesque and convincing detail, until at last the King of Yiieh, in turn, has the King of Wu at his mercy; but he was, though a barbarian, magnanimously disposed, and accordingly he offered Fu-ch'ai the island of Chusan (so well known to us on account of our troops having occupied it in 1840) and three hundred married families to keep him company. But Fu-ch'ai was too proud to accept this Elba, the more especially so because he had it on his conscience that he had been acting throughout against the earnest advice of his faithful minister (a Ts'u renegade), whom he had put to death for his frankness. This adviser as he perished had cried out: "Don't forget to pluck my eyes out and stick them on the east gate, so that I may witness the entry of the Yiieh troops!" He therefore committed suicide, first veiling his face because, as he said: "I have no face to offer my adviser when I meet him in the next world; if, on the other hand, the dead have no knowledge, then it does not matter what I do." After the beginning of our Christian era, when the direct communication between Japan (overlandviâCorea) and China (also by sea to Wu) was first officially noticed by the historians, it was recorded by the Chinese annalists that part of Fu-ch'ai's personal following had escaped in ships towards the east, and had founded a state in Japan. But it must not be forgotten that then (473 B.C.) orthodox China had never yet heard of Japan in any form, though of course it is possible that the maritime states of Wu and Yiieh may have had junk intercourse with many islands in the Pacific.
We have already ventured upon a few remarks upon this subject in Chapter XXIII., but so much is apt to be made out of slight historical materials-such, for instance, as the pleasure expedition of a Chinese emperor in 984 B.C. to the Tarim Valley— that it may be useful to suggest the true proportions, and the modest possible bearing of this "Japanese" migration—assuming the slender record of it to be true; and the basis of truth is by no means a broad one; still less is it capable of sustaining a heavy superstructure.
Any one visiting Japan will notice that there are several distinct types of men in that country, the squat and vulgar, the oval-faced and refined, and many variations of these two; just as, in England, we have the Norman, Saxon, Irish, and Scotch types of face, with many othernuances. It is also clear from the kitchen-midden and other prehistoric remains; from the presence, even now, in Japan of the bearded Ainus (a word meaning in their own language "men"); and from the numerous accounts of Ainu- Japanese wars in both Chinese and Japanese history, that there were (as there still are) manners, and possibly yet other men, in ancient Japan, both very different from the manners and appearance of the cultured and gifted race, viewed as a homogeneous whole, we are now so proud to have as our political allies. But that brings us no nearer a historical solution, It is a persistent way with all ethnologists to search out whence this or that race came. Of course all races move and mingle, and must always have moved and mingled, when by so doing they could better their circumstances of life; but even if movement has taken place in Japan as it has elsewhere, there is no reason why, if comparatively uncivilized Japanese displaced Ainus, Ainus should not have, before that, displaced quite uncivilized Japanese; or, if other races came over the seas to displace the people already there, the natives already there should not have, later on, ejected these new-comers by sea routes.
In other words, it is quite futile (unless we can lay hands on definite objects, or definite facts recorded—even definite traditions) to try and account for hypothetical movements in prehistoric times. We are totally ignorant of early Teutonic, Hungarian, and Celtic movements-though, thanks solely to Chinese records, we are pretty certain, within defined limits, about early Turkish movements. How much more, then, must we be ignorant about the Japanese movements? If "people" must have come from somewhere, whence did these arrivals start, and why should they not go back; or why not meet other movers going to the place whence they themselves started? If we are to accept the only historical records or quasi-records we possess at all, that is, the Chinese records, then we must accept them for what they are worth on the face of them, and neither add to nor mutilate them; imperfect things that do exist are necessarily better than imaginary things that might have existed in their place. A few hundred families at most, we are told, escaped; and if it be true that they went intentionally to Japan, it is probable that the expert Wu sailors (none existed elsewhere in China) had already for long known the way thither, or to Quelpaert and Tsushima, which practically means to both Corea and Japan; in fact, if they sailed east from Ningpo, there is no other place to knock up against, even if the special intention were not there. Everything tends to show that Fu-ch'ai, though perhaps a barbarian in 473 B.C., was of orthodox if remote pedigree dating from 1200 B.C., and that the ruling class of Wu was very different from the "barbarians" by whom (as we are specifically told) Wu was surrounded; the situation was like that of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, like Cecrops and Cadmus, amongst the earliest barbarous Greeks. It amounts, then, to this, that, just as Chinese colonies and adventurers emerged under the stress of increased population, or under the impulses of curiosity, tyranny, and ambition, to found states in Ts'u, Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i, Lu, Wu, Yüeh, and other places round the central nucleus, so (they being the sole possessors of that magicPOWER, "records") other parties would from time to time sally forth either from the same orthodox centre, or from the semi-orthodox places surrounding that centre, to still remoter spots, such as, for instance, Corea, Japan, Formosa, Annam, Burma, Tibet, and Yiin Nan. Fu-ch'ai's surviving friends had indeed a very lively stimulus indeed-the fear of instant death-to drive them tumultuously over the seas; and doubtless, as they must have been perfectly harmless after tossing about hungry in open boats for weeks together, they would be as welcome to the Japanese king, or to the petty chief or chiefs who received the waifs, as in our own times was the honest sailor Will Adams when he drifted friendless to Japan, and whose statue now adorns a great Japanese city as that of a man who was, in a humble way, also a "civilizer" of Japan (600 A.D.). Doubtless, many Wu words, or Chinese words as then pronounced in Wu, had already been brought over by fishermen; but here at last was a great haul of (possibly) books and the way to interpret them; at least there was a great haul of the best class of the Wu ruling folk. It is true that the first Japanese envoys who came to China made as much of their Wu "origin" as they could; firstly, because it probably paid them as traders to do so; secondly, because it necessarily gave them a respectable status in China; and, thirdly, because they were, in the first century of our era, gradually beginning to understand the mystic power of the Chinese written character, and they would therefore naturally take an intense interest in all records, rumours, traditions, and fables about themselves, which they would embellish and "confirm" whenever it suited their interests to do so. Which of us does not begin to furbish up his pedigree when he is made a peer of the realm?
As to the bulk of the Japanese race, be it mixed or unmixed, it is surely in the main to be found now where it always was, or close by? It is no more depreciating to early Japan to give her a dynasty of Chinese adventurers, or perhaps to give her only hereditary Chinese advisers and scribes, than it is derogatory to the states of Europe to possess dynasties which belong by their origin, as a general rule, to almost any place but the countries they now govern as sovereigns. As to the ancient chiefs or kings of Japan, some of their genuine native names may have been preserved in the memories of men; whether they were or not, they were, even without records, as "ancient" chiefs as the best recorded chiefs of Egypt, Babylonia, or China; and it must be remembered that Egyptian and Babylonian records were non-existent to us for all practical purposes during many thousands of years, until we recently discovered how to read them: that is to say, what was once no history at all—the present condition of the prehistoric races of High Asia—suddenly becomes history when we find the records and know how to read them.
When, a few centuries later on, the Japanese had begun thoroughly to understand Chinese books, they decided to have an historical outfit of their own; they took what vague traditions they had, and, in the absence of any long-forgotten genuine records, or visible remains having part of the effect of records, simply fitted on to their heroes, real or imaginary, the Chinese posthumous system, and a selection of the historical facts recorded about the Chinese. Even the Emperor Muh in China was not so named until he died. If a man can be given a complimentary title three years after death (that was the Chinese rule at first), why not give it him 300 years after his death? The king or chief hitherto known, whether accurately or not, whether honestly or not, as X, had most certainly existed; that is, the tenth great-grandfather of the reigning prince; the ninth, eighth, and so on; must positively have been there at some remote period of the past. By calling him Jimmu (a Chinese emperor had already been posthumously so called) he is none the less there than he was before he was called Jimmu, and his new title therefore does not make him less of an entity than he was before. And so on with all the other Japanese emperors who, in the eighth century A.D., were similarly provided with imaginary names. Possibly this is how the Japanese argued with themselves when they set about the task. The situation is a curious one, and perhaps unique in the world; but it does not matter much (as suggested in Chapter XXXI.) so long as we keep imagination separate from real evidence.
We propose to say a few words now about peculiar customs which had vogue all over or in certain parts of China; of course some of them may be traced back to the "Rites of Chou," and to what is prescribed therein; but general administrative schemes representing in general terms things as they ought to be, or as the Chou federal and feudal oligarchy would have liked them to be, do not give us such a life-like picture of ancient China as specific accounts of definite events which really did happen. Take, for instance, the peculiar formalities connected with abject surrender.
After a great defeat in 699 B.C., just when Ts'u was beginning to emerge from its narrow confines between the Han and Yang-tsz Rivers, the defeated Ts'u generals had themselves bound in fetters, or with ropes, in order to await their king's pleasure. In 654, when Ts'u had one of the small orthodox states (in the Ho Nan nucleus) at its mercy, the baron presented himself with his hands tied behind, a piece of jade in his mouth, followed by his suite in mourning, carrying his coffin. It is evident that at this date Ts'u was still "barbarous," for the king had to ask what it all meant. It was explained to him that, when the Chou founder conquered China, and mutilated the last Shang dynasty emperor, that emperor's elder brother by an inferior mother had presented himself before the founder half naked, with his hands tied behind his back, his left hand leading a ram (or goat), and his right carrying sedge for wrapping round the sacrificial victim; he was enfeoffed as Duke of Sung. In 537 the same thing happened to a later King of Ts'u in connection with another petty principality, and the king had to be reminded of the 654 precedent. Thus there must have been records of some kind in Ts'u at an early date. In 645 B.C., when the ruler of Ts'in took prisoner his brother-in- law, the ruler of Tsin, and was seriously contemplating the annexation of Tsin, together with the duty of discharging Tsin sacrifices, his own sister, with bare feet, wearing mourning, and bound with a mourning belt, intercedes successfully for her husband. In 597 B.C. the ruler of the important orthodox state of Cheng went through the form of dragging along, with the upper part of his own body uncovered, a ram or goat into the presence of the King of Ts'u. In 511, when the ruler of Lu had to fly the country and throw himself upon the generosity of Tsin, in order to escape from the dangerous machinations of the intriguing great families of Lu, the six Tsin statesmen (who were themselves at that moment, as heads of great private clans, gradually undermining their own prince's rights) sent for the arch-intriguer, and called upon him to explain his conduct. At that time Lu was coquetting between its two powerful neighbours, Tsin and Ts'i. The conspirator duly presented himself before the Areopagus of Tsin grandees, barefoot and attired in common cloth (i.e.not of silk, but of hemp), in order to explain to them the circumstances of the duke's exile: it is characteristic of the times, and also of the frankness of history, to find it added that he succeeded in bribing the grandees to give an unjust decision. When the Kings of Yüeh and Wu were in turn at each other's mercy, in 494 and 473 respectively, their envoys, in offering submission, in each case advanced to the conqueror "walking on the knees," with bust bared: this knee-walking suggests Annamese, Siamese, and possibly Japanese forms rather than Chinese. The Wu servants at dinner are said to have "waited" on their knees. The third and last August Emperor in 207 submitted to the conquering Han dynasty seated in an unadorned chariot, drawn by a white horse (with signs of mourning), carrying his seal-sash round his neck (figurative of hanging or strangling himself), and offered the seals of the Son of Heaven to the Prince of Han.
Something has already been said about the rules of succession in Ts'u and Ts'in. When the Duke of Sung just mentioned died, in 1078 B.C., he was succeeded by his younger brother because his own son was dead; this was in accordance with the Shang dynasty's ritual laws. Even the Warrior King himself, founder of the Chou dynasty, was not the eldest son of his father, the (posthumously) Civilian King; the latter had set aside the elder of the two sons; and it will be remembered that, several generations before that, two of the royal Chou brothers had voluntarily retired to colonize the Wu Jungle country, in order that their younger brother, father of the future Civilian King, might succeed to the then extremely limited vassal state of Chou. Later on, in 729, a Duke of Sung on his death-bed bequeathed the succession to his younger brother instead of to his own son, on the ground that the rule is, "son to father, younger to elder brother"—a "universal rule" approved by Mencius in later times. The younger brother in this case thrice refused the kingly crown, but at last accepted, and Confucius in his history censures the act, which, it is considered, contributed to Sung's ultimate downfall. (It must be remembered that Confucius' ancestors were themselves of royal Sung extraction.) In 652 the younger brother by the superior spouse wished, at his father's death-bed, to cede his right to the succession of Sung to his elder brother by an inferior wife; the dying father commended the spirit, but forbade the proposed sacrifice of prior right, and the elder therefore served the younger as counsellor. In 493 a Duke of Sung, irritated on account of his eldest son having left the country, nominated a younger son as successor, and after his death his wife confirmed by decree her late husband's nomination; but the younger brother firmly declined, on the ground that the rule of succession was a fixed one, and that he was unworthy to perform the sacrifices to the gods of the land and grain. It is a curious coincidence that the question of status in wives affects the present rulers of both China and Japan. Though the dowager was Empress-Mother, she always ceded the pas to the senior dowager, who had no children. And as to the Mikado's mother, who died last October, she was, it seems, never officially considered as an Empress.
In 817 B.C. the Emperor himself is censured by history for having, "contrary to rule," wished to set up as ruler of Lu a second son in preference to the elder son; he repeated the act in 796, as has already been explained in Chapter XX., when a few other instances were cited to illustrate the general rule in China. At this time the waning power of the emperors still evidently flickered. In 608, through the meddlesome political interference of Ts'i, a concubine's son succeeded to the Lu throne in preference to the legitimate wife's son; curiously enough, the legitimate wife was a Ts'i princess. The result of this irregularity was that the "three powerful families" of Lu (themselves descendants of the ruling family) grew restless, and the state began to decline. On the death of a King of Ts'u in 516, it was proposed to put on the throne, instead of the king's young son, the king's younger brother by an inferior mother, on the ground that the mother of the young son in question was the wife obtained from Ts'in by the king for marriage to his eldest son (who had since joined the king's enemies), which young lady the king had subsequently decided to marry himself. Even under this irregular and complicated family tangle, the proposed succession was disapproved by the counsellors, on the ground that irregular successions invariably produced trouble in the state. In the year 450 B.C. the ruler of Ts'i insisted, against advice, on the succession of a younger son by a favourite concubine in preference to his elder sons by superior mothers, including the first and most dignified spouse. But here, again, the powerful families intervened; one of the elder sons, who had fled to Lu, was brought back secretly in a sack; the wrongful successor was murdered, and the "powerful family" which took the lead in state affairs soon afterwards, to the horror of Confucius, by intrigue and by further assassination, secured the Ts'i throne for itself. It will thus be noticed that all the great states except Ts'in had their full share of succession troubles.
There were several customs practised in warfare which are worthy of short notice. In 633 B.C. a Ts'u general, in the interests of discipline, flogged several military men, and "had the ears of others pierced by arrows, according to military regulation." In 639 this same king had sent as a present to some princesses of other states, who had congratulated him on his victory over Sung, "a pile of the enemy's left ears." As the historians express their disgust at this indelicate act, it was presumably not an orthodox practice, at all events in this particular form. In 607 there were captured from Sung 450 war-chariots and 250 soldiers; the latter had their left ears cut off; in this case the victors were CHÊNG troops, acting under Ts'u's orders, and it is presumed that CHÊNG officers cut off the ears under Ts'u's commands. A few years later two or three Ts'u generals were discussing what the ancients did when they challenged for a battle; it was decided that the best "form" was to rush up to the entrenchments, cut off an enemy's left ear, carry him away in your chariot, and rush back to your own camp. As there is a special Chinese character or pictograph for "ears cut off in battle," it thus appears that to a certain extent even the orthodox Chinese practised the "scalping" art, which was doubtless intended to furnish easy proof of claims for reward based upon prowess; in fact, even in modern official Chinese, a decapitated head is called a "head-step," an expression evidently dating from the time when a step in rank was given for each head or group of heads taken.
Rulers, whether the Emperor or vassals, faced south in the exercise of their sovereign powers. Thus, when the Duke of Chou, after the death of his brother the Martial King, acted as Regent pending the minority of the Martial King's son, his own nephew, he faced south; but he faced north once more when he resumed his status of subject. It has already been mentioned, in Chapter XX., that in 640 B.C. the state of Lu made the south gate of the Lu capital the Law Gate, because it was by the south gates that all rulers' commands emanated. In 546 a counsellor of Ts'u explained to the king how, since Tsin influence had predominated in the orthodox state of CHÊNG, this last had ceased to "face south towards its former protector." Thus, though the Emperor faces south towards the sun, and his subjects in turn face north in his honour, those subjects face their other protector in whatever direction he may lie, supposing the Emperor's protection to be inadequate. It is evidently the same principle as "bowing towards the east," and "turning towards Mecca," both of which formalities must be modified according to place. In 315 B.C., when Yen (the Peking plain) had become one of the six independent kingdoms, a usurper (to whom the King of Yen had foolishly committed full powers) "turned south" to perform acts of sovereignty in the king's name. In 700 B.C., in the orthodox state of Wei, we hear of "princes of the left and right," which is explained to mean "sons of mothers whose official place is left or right of the principal spouse." Right used to be more honourable than left in China, but left now takes precedence of right. Thus the provinces of Shan Tung and Shan Si are also called "Left of the Mountains" and "Right of the Mountains," because the Emperor faces south. Notwithstanding, the ancient phraseology sometimes survives; for instance, "stands right of him" means "is better than he is," and "to left him" means "to prove him wrong or worse." Allyamênsin China face south; there are rare exceptions, usually owing to building difficulties. Once, in the province of Kwei Chou, I was officially invited by the mandarin to take my seat on his right instead of on his left, because, as he explained, hisyamêndoor did not face south, butwest; and, he added, it was more honourable for me, as an official guest, to sit north, facing west, than to sit south, facing west. In Canton, the Viceroy used out of courtesy to sit south, facing north, and make his own interpreter sit north, facing south; the consul sat east, facing west, and the consul's interpreter sat west, facing east. But the consul could not have presumed to occupy the north seat thus given to an inferior on the principle of deminimisnoncurat lex; nor was the Viceroy willing to assert his "command" to a guest. In 436 the armies of Yiieh marching north through Ho Nan called the Chinese places lying to their west the "left" towns; but that was perhaps because Yiieh came marching from the south. In 221 B.C., when for the first time South China to the sea became part of the imperial dominions, the Emperor's territory was described as extending southward to the "north-facing houses." Hong Kong and Canton are just on the tropical line; but the island of Hainan, and also Tonquin, are actually in the tropics. Whether the houses there do really face north—which I have never noticed—or whether the expression is merely symbolical, I cannot say; but the idea is "to the regions where, when the sun is on the tropic, you have to turn north to see him."
A point of honour in China was not to make war on an enemy who was in mourning, but this rule seems to have been honoured in the breach as much as in the observance thereof. Two centuries before the Chou dynasty came into power, an emperor of the Shang dynasty distinguished himself by not speaking at all during the three years he occupied the mourning hut near the grave. As we have seen, the first rulers of Lu (as a Chou fief) modified existing customs, and introduced the three years' mourning rule there. In connection with a Sung funeral in 651 B.C., it is explained that the bier lay between the two front pillars, and not, as with the Chou dynasty, on the top of the west side steps; it will be remembered that Sung represented the sacrifices of the extinct Shang dynasty. That same year the future Second Protector (then a refugee among the Tartars) declined to put in a claim to the Tsin succession against his brothers "because he had not been in mourning whilst a fugitive." In 642 Sung and her allies made war on Ts'i, which was then mourning for the First Protector; by a just Nemesis the Tartars came to the rescue and saved Ts'i. In 627, after the Second Protector's death, Ts'in declared war, whilst Tsin was mourning, upon a petty orthodox principality belonging to the same clan as Tsin and the Emperor, and belonging also to the Tsin vassal system. This so enraged the new ruler of Tsin that he dyed his white mourning clothes black, so as to avenge the insult, and yet not to outrage the rites: moreover, white was unlucky in warfare: victorious over Ts'in, he then proceeded to mourn for his father, and ever after that black was adopted, by way of memento, as the national colour of Tsin. In 626 and 622 the Emperor sent high officers to represent him at Lu funerals, and to carry gems to place in deceased's mouth, "to show that he (the Emperor) had not the heart to leave the deceased unsupplied with food." In 581 the ruler of Lu, being on a visit to Tsin, was forcibly detained by Tsin, in order to swell the importance of a Tsin ruler's funeral. Lu (like the petty orthodox states of Wei, Sung, CHÊNG, etc., further south) was nearly always under the rival political constraint of either Ts'i, Tsin, or Ts'u; and this factor must accordingly also be taken into account in explaining Confucius' longing for the good old days of imperial predominance. In 572 Tsin attacked Cheng, though of the same clan as itself, whilst in mourning; but in 567 semi-barbarian Ts'u set a good example to orthodox Tsin by withdrawing its troops out of deference to a later official mourning then in force in Cheng: in 564 the King of Ts'u withdrew his armies home altogether on account of the mourning due to his own deceased mother. In 560 barbarian Wu attacked Ts'u whilst in mourning for the above king (the one who first conquered the Canton region for Ts'u); but, here again, by a just Nemesis, Wu's army was cut to pieces, and Wu's own ally, Tsin, censured her for having done such an improper thing. In 544 the prime minister of Tsin mourned for his Ts'u co- signatory of the celebrated Peace Conference Treaty of 546; and this graceful act is explained to be in accordance with the rites. In 544 Ts'u herself was in mourning, and in accordance with the terms of the Peace Conference Treaty, under which the Tsin vassals and the Ts'u vassals were to pay their respects to Ts'u and Tsin respectively—Ts'in and Ts'i, as great powers, being excused, or, rather, discreetly left alone—Ts'u put great pressure on Lu to secure the personal presence of the Lu ruler at the Ts'u funeral. The orthodox duke did not at all like this "truckling to a barbarian"; but one of his counsellors suggested behaving before the corpse as he would behave to a vassal of his own: this was done, and the unsophisticated Ts'u was none the wiser at the time, though, later on, the king discovered the pious fraud. In 514 B.C. Wu wished to attack Ts'u while, mourning, and the virtuous Ki- chah was promptly sent by Wu to sound Tsin about thefacheuse situation.At a Lu funeral in 509, it was explained that the new duke could only mount the throne after the burial was over; it was added "even the Son of Heaven's commands do not run in Lu during this critical period;á fortioriis the duke not capable of transacting his own subjects' business." But long before this, when the First Protector died, in 643, his body lay for sixty-seven days in the coffin unattended, whilst his five sons were wrangling about the succession; in fact, the worms were observed crawling out of the coffin. These painful details have a powerful historical interest, for when (as mentioned on p. 209) his tomb was opened nearly 1000 years later, dogs had to be sent in ahead to test the air, as the stench was so great. In 492 an unpopular prince of Wei was in Tsin, which state had an interest in placing him on the throne. There happened to be in Tsin at that moment a scoundrel who had fled to Tsin from Lu, because he had found Confucius too strong for him in Lu; and this man suggested to Tsin that it would be a good plan to send seventy Wei men back to Wei in mourning clothes and sash, so as to make the Wei people think that the prince was dead, and thus gain an opportunity to "run him in" by surprise, and set him up as ruler. In 489, when the King of Ts'u died in the field of battle, his three brothers, all of whom had declined his offer of the throne, but one of whom had at last accepted in order to give the dying man peace, decided to conceal the king's death from the army whilst they sent for his son by a Yiieh mother, pleading that the king had been noncompos mentiswhen he proposed an irregular succession, and that the promise made to him was, therefore, of no avail. In 485 Lu and Wu joined in an attack upon Ts'i during the latter's mourning—a particularly disgraceful political combination: no wonder Confucius was hastily sent for from the state of CH'ÊN, whither he had previously retired in disgust at the corruption of his native land. In 481 a conspiracy which was going on in Ts'i was delayed because one of the chief actors, being in mourning, could not attend to public business of any kind. In 332 B.C. Ts'i took ten towns from Yen by successfully attacking her whilst in mourning; one of the travelling diplomats and intriguers so common in China at that period insisted upon the towns being restored. This was at the exact moment when the philosopher Mencius, who seems to have also been a great politicaldilettante, was circulating to and fro between such monarchs as the Kings of Ts'i and Ngwei, aliasLiang, as is fully explained in the still extant book of Mencius.
All the above quaint instances, novel though they may be in detail, strongly recall to us in principle our own "rules" of international law, which are always liable to unexpected "construction" according to the exigencies of war and the power wielded by the "constructor." Interarma leges silent. As usual in these ritual matters, Ts'in is distinguished by total absence of mention.
So far as it is possible to judge from the concrete instances in which women are mentioned, it appears that in ancient Chinese times their confinement and seclusion was neither nominally nor actively so strict as it has been in later days, and they seem to have been much more companionable to men than they have been ever since the ridiculous foot-squeezing fashion came into vogue over a thousand years ago. When the Martial King addressed his semi- barbarous western allies, as he prepared his march upon the last Shang Emperor in 1122 B.C., he observed: "The ancient proverb says the hen crows not in the morn; when she does, the house will fall"—in allusion to the interference of the debauched Emperor's favourite concubine in public affairs; and we have seen, under the heading of Law in Chapter XX., how one of the imperial statutes, proclaimed or read regularly in the vassal kingdoms, prohibited the meddling of women in public business. But, in spite of this, so far as promoting the succession rights and political interests of their own children goes, wives and concubines certainly exerted considerable influence, whether legitimate or not, in all the states. The murder of an Emperor and flight of his successor in 771 B.C. was in its inception owing to the intrigues of women about Court. A few years only after that event, we find the orthodox ruler of Wei marrying a beautiful Ts'i princess (her beauty is a matter of history, and is celebrated in the Odes, which are themselves a popular form of history); and then, because she had no children, further marrying a princess of Ch'en. This princess unfortunately lost her offspring; but her sister also enjoyed the prince's favour, and her son was, after her death, given in adoption to the first childless Ts'i wife. This son succeeded to the Wei throne, but was ultimately murdered by a younger brother born of a concubine, who was next succeeded by still another younger brother, whose queen had also been one of his father's concubines. Thus in the most orthodox states (Wei was of the imperial clan), the rites often seem not to have counted for much in practice.—This book, it must here be repeated, deals with specific recorded facts, and not with civilization as itoughtto have been under the Rites ofChou.—So, even in comparatively modern China, 1500 years later, the third emperor of the T'ang dynasty married his father's concubine, and she ultimately reigned as empress in her own right, which is in itself an outrage upon the "rites."
In 694 B.C. the ruler of Lu (also of the imperial clan) married a Ts'i princess, who, as has been stated in Chapter XXXIV., not only had incestuous relations with her brother of Ts'i, but led that brother to procure the murder of her husband. In connection with this woman's further visit to Ts'i two years later, the rule is cited: "Women, when once married, should not recross the frontier." The same rule is quoted in 655 when a Lu princess, who had married a petty mesne-vassal of Lu in 670, recrossed the Lu frontier in order to visit her son in Lu.
The Second Protector, during his wanderings, we know, married first a Tartar wife and then a Ts'i wife, both of whom showed disinterested affection for him, and genuine regard for his rights to the Tsin succession, Yet the ruler of Ts'in supplied him with five more royal girls, of whom one had already been married to the Second Protector's predecessor and nephew, the Marquess of Tsin. It is but fair to the memory of this uxorious Tsin ruler to say that he only took her over under protest, and under the immediate stress of political urgencies; he ultimately made her his principal spouse at the expressed desire of his ally the Ts'in ruler. He must have later married a daughter of the Emperor too, for, after the succession of a son and grandson, another of his sons named "Black Buttocks," being the youngest, and also "son of a Chou mother," came to the throne. Thus in those troublous times the honour of imperial princesses evidently did not count for very much at the great vassal courts. The readiness of Ts'in to induce the Tsin ruler to take over his nephew's wife (being a Ts'in princess) accentuates the semi-Tartar civilization of Ts'in at least, if not of Tsin too; for both Hiung-nu (200 B.C.) and Turks (A.D. 500) had a fixed rule that a Khan successor should take over all his predecessor's women, with the single exception of his own natural mother. In the year 630 the King of Ts'u married or carried off two CHÊNG sisters (of the imperial clan). The ruler of CHÊNG had been insolent to the future Second Protector during his wanderings in the year 637, and, in order to avoid that Protector's vengeance, had been subsequently obliged to throw himself under Ts'u protection. "This ignoring of the rites by the King of Ts'u will result in his failing to secure the Protectorship," it was said. However, these princesses, though of the imperialKiclan by marriage into it, were really daughters of a CHÊNG ruler by two separate Ts'i and Ts'u wives: moreover, previous to the accession of the Hia dynasty (in 2205 B.C.), a Chinese elective Emperor had married the two daughters of his predecessor, whose own son was unworthy to succeed: and, generally, apart from this precedent, the rule against marrying two sisters, even if it existed, seems to have been loosely applied (cf.Chapter XXXIII.).
In connection with the Cheng succession in 629, it is mentioned that "the wife's sons being all dead, X, being wisest of the secondary wives' or concubines' sons, is most eligible" (cf.Chapter XXXVII.).
Great political complications arose in connection with a clever and beautiful princess of Cheng who had had variousliaisonswith high personages in the state of Ch'en and elsewhere; in the end she was carried off in 589 by a treacherous Ts'u statesman to Tsin; and indirectly this adventure led to his being charged by Tsin with a mission to Wu; to the subsequent entry of Wu into the conclave of federal princes; and to the ultimate sacking of the Ts'u capital by the King of Wu in 506: it is easy to read between the lines that the Kings of Ts'u were considered unusually arbitrary and tyrannical rulers; over and over again we find that their most capable statesmen took service with powers inimical to Ts'u. In 581 the ruler of Cheng, being forcibly detained in Tsin whilst on a political visit there, was temporarily replaced in Cheng by his elder brother, born of an inferior wife.
A marriage between the two states of Sung and Lu having been arranged, the imperial clan states of Lu and Wei had certain duties to perform at the wedding, which took place in 583; and it is recorded that the latter sent "handmaids" The explanation given is a little involved, but it seems to throw some light on the marriage of sisters question. It seems that the legitimate spouse and her "left and right handmaids" were each entitled to three "cousins or younger sisters" of the same clan-name as themselves, "thus making a total of nine girls, the idea being to broaden the base of succession." Not content with this, Lu sent a special envoy to Sung the next year to "lecture" the princess. It is explained that "women at home are under the power of their father; married, under that of their husbands." Tsin also sent handmaids this year. It is further explained that "handmaids are a trifling matter, and they are only mentioned in this Lu princess case because her marriage turned out so badly." The following year Ts'i despatched handmaids, but, "being of a different clan-name, Ts'i was not ritual in doing so."
The precise functions of these paranymphs, or under-studies of wives, together with the rules governing their selection, are doubtless clearly enough described in the Rites ofChou; but we are only dealing here with concrete facts as recorded.
In 526 B.C., when Ts'in gave a princess in marriage to the Ts'u heir, the Ts'u king decided to keep her for himself (see p. 234). Only a few years before that, Ts'u had given a princess of her own in marriage to the heir-apparent of one of the petty orthodox states (imperial clan), and the reigning father had had improper relations with her, which in the end led to his murder by his son; thus Ts'u, however delinquent, had already been given a bad example by the imperial clan.
After his humiliating defeat by the King of Wu in 494 B.C., the King of Yiieh introduced a veritableLex Juliainto his dominions, in order to increase the population more quickly, and to prepare for his great revenge. Robust men were forbidden to marry old women, and old men to marry robust women. Parents were punished if girls were not married by the time they were seventeen, and if boys were not married by twenty.Enceintewomen had to be placed under the care of public midwives. For every boy born, a royal bounty of two pots of wine and a dog were given: for every girl born, two pots of wine and a sucking-pig;— the dog, it is explained, being figurative of outdoor, the pig of internal economy. Triplets were to be suckled at the public expense; twins to be fed, when big enough, at the public expense. The chief wife's son must be mourned, with absence from official duty, for three years; other sons for two; and both kinds of son were to be equally buried with weeping and wailing. Orphans, and the sons of sick or poor widows, were to receive official employment. Distinguished sons were to have their apartments cleansed for them, and had to be well fed and handsomely clothed. Learned men from other states were to be officially welcomed in the ancestral temple. With reference to this curious law, which is totally un-Chinese in its startling originality, it may be mentioned that it seems to have gradually led to that laxity of morals in ancient Yiieh which is still proverbial in those parts; for, when the First August Emperor was touring over his new empire in 212 B.C., he left an inscription (still on record) at the old Yiieh capital, denouncing the "pig-like adultery" of the region, and, more especially, the remarrying of widows already in possession of children. Only a few years ago, proclamations appeared in this region denouncing the pernicious custom of forcing widows to remarry. Although Kwan-tsz is supposed to have "invented" the Babylonian woman for Ts'i, nothing is said in any ancient Chinese history about common prostitution; nor is female infanticide ever mentioned. In 502 B.C. the Lu revolutionary, already mentioned in Chapter XXXVII., who was driven to Tsin by Confucius' astute measures, had, before leaving Lu, formed a plot to murder all the sons, by wives, of the three "powerful families" who were intriguing against the ducal rights, and to put concubine sons-being creatures of his own-in their place; thus the succession principles applied not only to ruling families, but also to private houses; though, as a matter of fact, these three were all, in their origin, descended from previous ruling dukes. As explained in Chapters XII. and XXXIII., after five generations a fresh "family" is supposed to spring out of the common clan.
In spite of Wu's barbarism, the fact of its belonging, by remote origin, to the imperial clan (through its first: ruler having magnanimously migrated from Chou before Chou conquered China in 1122), made it technically incest for Lu to intermarry with Wu; thus, when in 482 B.C., a Wu princess (evidently forced for political purposes upon Lu) died, her husband, the ruler of Lu, was obliged to refrain from a public burial, as has been explained in Chapter XXXIII. on Names.
It will have been noticed that, even in strictly historical times subsequent to 842 B.C., orthodox China was,mutatis mutandis, like orthodox Greece, a petty territory surrounded by a fringe of little-known regions, such as Macedonia, Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Egypt, and Italy; not to say distant Marseilles, and the Pillars of Hercules-all places at best very little visited except by navigators, and even then only by a few specially enterprising navigators or desperate adventurers; though later on Greek influence and Greek colonies soon began to replace the Phoenician, and to exhibit surrounding countries in a more correct and definite light.
As touches the surrounding regions of ancient China, and the knowledge of it possessed by the orthodox nucleus, such traditions as there are all point to acquaintance with the south and east rather than with the north and west. Persons who are persistently bent on bringing the earliest Chinese from the Tower of Babel by way of the Tarim Valley, are eager to seize upon the faintest tradition, or what seems to them an apparent tradition, in support of these preconceived views; ignoring the obviously just argument that, if we are to pay any attention to mere traditions at all, we must in common fairness give priority in value to such traditions as there are, rather than such traditions as are not, but only as might be. For instance, there was a Chinese tradition that the founder of the Hia dynasty (2205 B.C.) was, in a sense, somehow connected with the barbarous kingdom of Yiieh, inasmuch as the great-great-grandson of the founder of the Hia empire a century later enfeoffed a son by a concubine in that remote region. The earliest Chinese mention of Japan is that it lay to the east of Yiieh, and that the Japanese used to come and trade with Yiieh. If the Japanese traditions, on the other hand, as first put into independent writing in the eighth century A.D., are worth anything, then the Japanese pretend that their ancestors were present at a durbar held by the above-mentioned great-great- grandson of the Hia founder; and they also firmly derive their ruling houses (both king and princes) from the kingdom of Wu. We have seen in former chapters that both Wu and Yiieh, the most ancient capitals of which were within 200 miles of each other, spoke one language, and that both were derived (i.e., the administrative caste was derived) from two separate Chinese imperial dynasties. Now, the founder of the Hia dynasty is celebrated above all things for his travels in, and his geography of China, usually called the "Tribute of Yii" (his name),—a still existing work, the real origin of which may be obscure, but which has come down to us in the Book (of History). This geography is not only accurate, but it even now throws great light upon the original direction of river-courses which have since changed; in this work there is not the faintest tradition or indirect mention of any Chinese having ever migrated into China from the west.
There is no foundation, however, for the supposition, favoured by some European writers, that the Nine Tripods (frequently mentioned above) contained upon their surface "maps" of the empire; they merely contained a summary, or a collection of pictures, symbolizing the various tribute nations. On the other hand, there is no trace in the "Tribute of Yii" of any knowledge of China south of the Yarig-tsz River, south of its mouths, and south of its connection with the lakes of Hu Nan. The "province" of Yang Chou is vaguely said to extend from the Hwai River "south to the sea." The "Blackwater" is the only river mentioned which exhibits any knowledge of the west (i.e. of the west half of modern Kan Suh province), and this "Blackwater" was crossed in 984 B.C. by the Emperor Muh.
Then there is the tradition of Vii's predecessor, the Emperor Shun, who, as mentioned in the last chapter, married the two daughters of the Emperor Yao, and is buried at a point just south of the Lake Tung-t'ing, in the modern province of Hu Nan: it is certain that in 219 B.C., when the First August Emperor was on tour, the mountain where the grave lay was pointed out to him at a distance, if he did not actually go up to it. Again, the grandfather of the Warrior King who founded the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C. was, as already repeatedly pointed out, only a younger brother, his two elder brothers having migrated to the Jungle, and, proceeding thence eastward, founded a colony in Wu (half-way between Nanking and Shanghai). Both Wu and Yiieh, for very many centuries after that, were extremely petty states of only 50 or 60 miles in extent, and for all practical purposes of history may be considered to have been one and the same region, to wit, the flat, canal-cut territory through which the much-disputed Shanghai- Hangchow railway is to run. After the death of the Martial King, when his brother the Duke of Chou was Regent for his son, the duke incurred the suspicion of other brethren and relatives as to his motives, and had to retire for some time to Ts'u, or, as it was then called, the Jungle country, for two years. There is a tradition that a mission from one of the southern Yiieh states found its way to the Duke of Chou, who is supposed to have fitted up for the envoys a cart with a compass attached to it, in order to keep the cart's head steadily south. This tradition, which only appears as atraditionin one of the dynastic histories of the fifth century A. D., is not given at all in the earlier standard history, and it is by no means proved that the undoubtedly early Chinese knowledge of the loadstone extended to the making of compasses. Yet, as Rénan has justly pointed out in effect, in his masterly evidences of Gospel truth, a weak tradition is better worth considering than no tradition at all. Besides, there is some slight indirect confirmation of this, for in 880 B.C. or thereabout, a King of Ts'u gave one of his younger sons a Yiieh kingdom bearing almost the same double name as that Yüeh kingdom from which the envoys in 1080 B.C. came to the Duke of Chou; in each case the first part of the double name was Yiieh, and the second part only differed slightly. Again, in or about 820, some of the sons of the king exiled themselves to a place vaguely defined as "somewhere south of the Han River," which can scarcely mean anything other than "the country of the Shan or Siamese races," who lived then in and around Yiin Nan, and some of whom are still known by the vague name used as here in 820 B.C. The vagueness of habitat simply means that all south of the Han and Yang-tsz wasterraincognita to China proper. There is another tradition, unsupported by standard history, to the effect that the Martial King enfeoffed a faithful minister of the emperor and dynasty he had just supplanted as a vassal in Corea. Here, again, if the emperor's own grandfather, or grand-uncles and trusted friends, could find their way to Wu, and, later, to Japan, not to mention Shan Tung and the Peking plain, it is reasonable to permit a respected adherent of the dethroned monarch to find his way to Corea, the more in that the centre of administrative gravity of Corea was then Liao Tung and South Manchuria—at the utmost the north part of modern Corea—rather than the Corean peninsula.
In the year 649 the First Protector began to boast of having done as much as any of the' three dynasties, Hia, Shang, and Chou, during the 1500 years before him; he then defines the area of his glory, which is circumscribed by (at the very utmost) the west part of Shan Si, the south part of Ho Nan, the north part of the Peking plain, and the Gulf of "Pechelee." The Second Protector, when he safely reached his ancestral throne after nineteen years of wanderings as Pretender, said to his faithful Tartar henchman and father-in-law: "I have made the tour of the whole world (or whole empire) with you." As a matter of fact, he had been with the Tartars, certainly in central, and possibly also in northern Shan Si; in Ts'i, which means the northern part of Shan Tung and southern part of Chih Li; thence across the four small orthodox states of Sung, Wei, Ts'ao, and CHÊNG (which simply means up the Yellow River valley into Ho Nan), to Ts'u; and thence Ts'in fetched him to put him on the Tsin throne. The Emperor was already an obscure figure-head beneath all political notice, and no other parts of what we now call China were known to the Protector, even by name. As we shall see in a later chapter, Confucius covered the same ground, except that he never went to Tsin or to Tartarland. The first bare mention of Yiieh is in 670 B.C., when the new King of Ts'u, who had assassinated his elder brother, and who therefore wished to make amends for this crime and for his father's rude conquests, and to consolidate his position by putting himself on good behaviour to federal China, made dutiful advances to Lu and to the Emperor (these two minor powers then best representing the old ritual civilization). The Emperor replied: "Go on conquering the barbarians and Yiieh, but let the Hia (i.e. orthodox Chinese) states alone." In 601 Ts'u and Wu came to a friendly understanding about their mutual frontiers, and Yiieh was also admitted to the conclave orentente; but this was a local act, and had nothing whatever to do with China proper, which first hears of Yiieh as an independent or semi-independent power in 536, when the King of Ts'u, with a string of conquered orthodox Chinese princes in train as his allies, and also a Yiieh contingent, makes war on Wu. In later days there is evidence showing that there was not much general knowledge of China as a whole, and that interstate intercourse was chiefly confined to next-door neighbours. For instance, when Tsin boldly marched an army upon Ts'i in 589 B.C., it was considered a remarkable thing that Tsin chariots should actually gaze upon the sea. In 560, when the Ts'i minister and philosopher, Yen-tsz, was in Ts'u as envoy, and the Ts'u courtiers were playing tricks upon him (as previously narrated in Chapter IX.) he said: "I have heard it stated that when once you get south of the Hwai River the oranges are good. In the same way, we northerners produce but sorry rogues; the genuine article reaches its perfection in Ts'u." Thus, even at this date, the Yang-tsz was regarded much as the Romans of the Empire regarded the Danube—as a sort of vague barrier betweencivisandbarbarus. In no sense was the Ts'u capital—at no time were the bulk of the Ts'u dominions—south of that Great River; nor, in fact, were the capitals of Wu and Yiieh south of it either, for one of the three mouths (the northernmost was as now), corresponded to the Soochow Creek and the Wusung River, as they pass through the Shanghai settlement of to-day; whilst the other ancient mouth entered the sea at modern Hangchow. We have given various other evidence above to show that, even earlier than this, the Yang-tsz was an unexplored region, known, and that only imperfectly and locally, to the Ts'u government alone. In the year 656 B.C. the First Protector called Ts'u to book because, in 1003 B.C., the Emperor had made a tour to the Great River and had never returned (see Chapter XX-XV.). Again, when the imperial power collapsed in 771 B.C., the first Earl of CHÊNG (a relative of the Emperor) consulted the imperial astrologer as to where he had better establish his new fief: his own idea was to settle southwards on the borders of the Yang-tsz; but he was dissuaded from this step on the ground that the Ts'u power would grow accordingly as the Chou power declined, and thus CHÊNG would all the easier fall a prey to Ts'u in the future if she migrated now so far south. The astrologer makes another observation which supports the view that Ts'u and orthodox China were originally of the same prehistoric stock. He says: "When the remote ancestor of Ts'u did good service to the Emperor (2400 B.C.), his renown was great, yet his descendants never became so flourishing as those of the Chou family." In 597 B.C., when the Earl of CHÊNG really was at the mercy of Ts'u, he said: "If you choose to send me south of the Yang-tsz towards the South Sea, I shall not have the right to object"; meaning, "no exile, however remote, is too severe for my deserts." In 549, when the Tsin generals were marching against Ts'u, they were particularly anxious to find good CHÊNG guides who knew the routes well. Finally, in 541, a Tsin statesman made the following observations to a prince (afterwards king) of Ts'u, who was then on a mission to Tsin, by way of illustrating for his visitor the conquests and distant expeditions of ancient times:—
"The Emperor Shun (who married Yao's two daughters, and employed the founder of the Hia dynasty as his minister) was obliged to imprison the prince of the Three Miao (in Hu Nan; the savages of Hu Nan and Kwei Chou provinces are still calledMiao); the Hia dynasty had to deal with quarrels in (modern) Shan Tung and Shen Si; the Shang dynasty had to do the same in (modern) Kiang Su; the early Chou monarchs the same in (modern) North Kiang Su and South Shan Tung: but, now that there are no able emperors, all the vassals are at loggerheads. Wu and P'uh (the supposed Shan or Siamese region above referred to) are giving you trouble; but it is no one's concern but yours."